Consulting & Support
Technology Consulting
Architecture reviews and technology roadmaps
Some of the most expensive decisions a business makes are technical, and they are usually made by people who are being asked to trust a supplier's word. Should we build this or buy it? Is this codebase worth continuing with? Is this proposal reasonable? Can our platform handle next year? Is this vendor's answer true?
We give you an independent, written answer to questions like those, from engineers who build production systems rather than consultants who only advise on them. The distinction matters: advice from people who have to live with their own recommendations is different advice.
What's included
What we are asked to do
Architecture review.
An assessment of an existing system: how it is built, where it will break as you grow, what the real risks are, and what to change first. In priority order, with the reasoning.
Technical due diligence.
For an acquisition, an investment or a partnership: code quality, infrastructure, security, licensing, dependency risk, documentation and team capability — what you are actually buying underneath the demo.
Build, buy or configure.
A structured comparison with total cost of ownership over several years, not just the licence or the build price, including what each option costs to leave.
Vendor and proposal review.
We read the proposal or contract you have been sent and tell you what it does and does not commit the supplier to, where the estimate is unrealistic, and what to negotiate. Clients often use us as the technical counterparty in a supplier conversation.
Security and compliance assessment.
Where your exposure is, what data you hold and where it lives, and what needs to change to meet the obligations that apply to you.
Technology roadmap.
A sequenced two-to-three-year plan tied to the business plan, so technology spend can be budgeted rather than reacted to.
Cost review.
Cloud, licences, subscriptions and tooling, where waste accumulates quietly and is straightforward to remove once someone looks.
Team and capability assessment.
Whether you have the right roles, where the single points of failure are, and what to hire versus what to outsource.
CTO-level advisory on retainer
for companies that need senior technical judgement in the room regularly but not a full-time executive.
Why independence matters here
There is a conflict of interest built into this service, and we would rather name it than pretend otherwise: a company that builds software has an incentive to recommend building software.
So we handle it explicitly. Consulting engagements are quoted and delivered as their own piece of work, with the deliverable being written advice you own. Where we could be the ones to implement a recommendation, we say so plainly. Where an existing product would serve you better than anything custom, we name the product — we regularly recommend that clients spend less than they came prepared to. And you are free to take the recommendation to another supplier; some clients do, and the advice was still the right advice.
What you get
A written report, not a workshop with sticky notes. It contains findings with evidence, risks rated by likelihood and impact, recommendations in priority order, indicative costs and effort, and a plain-language executive summary that a non-technical board can read and act on. Plus a session to go through it and answer the questions it raises.
The audience matters: it is written to be usable by your team, your board and any supplier you engage next, not to be intelligible only to us.
On working with Codigoo
They refused to do a big-bang launch, which annoyed me at the time. We traded through the entire migration without a single hour of downtime, so they were right.
Questions we are usually asked
- How is this different from just getting a quote?
A quote answers "what will you charge to build what I described". Consulting answers "is what you described the right thing, and is it the highest-value thing to do first". Frequently the answer changes the brief substantially, and occasionally it removes the need for the project.
- Will you tell us our own team is wrong?
We will tell you what we find, and we do it without theatre. Reviews that exist to embarrass an internal team are worthless, because the team then stops cooperating and the findings stop being accurate. Most of the time internal teams already know exactly what the problems are and have not been able to get them prioritised — a written independent assessment is often what finally makes that possible.
- Can you review a system while it is being built by someone else?
Yes, and it is much cheaper to do it during than after. We can review architecture, code quality and delivery practice at intervals through a build, which gives you an early warning rather than a post-mortem.
- How long does an engagement take?
A focused architecture or proposal review is typically a short, fixed-price piece of work. Full due diligence or a roadmap takes longer because it involves interviews and analysis. We scope it and quote it fixed, so the price is not a function of how long we take.
If you are about to commit to a large technical decision and want a second opinion from someone with no stake in the outcome, that is precisely what this is for.
Talk to us about Technology Consulting
Thirty minutes with an engineer and a strategist who do this work — not a sales team. You will get an honest answer about whether it is the right thing to buy, and what it would realistically cost.